Demonic Possessions Cause Divorce

Marriage can be tough, especially when your spouse is possessed by a devil. A court in Milan recently granted an Italian man a divorce because his wife has exhibited “inexplicable behavior,” per the UK’s Daily Mail. This behavior, witnessed by a Capuchin monk, a priest, and the woman’s sister, included “fits,” levitation, and turning over a church pew before throwing it one-handed toward the alter.

The court ruled that the unnamed woman, a devout Catholic, was “clearly agitated” before they pronounced sentence, per the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera. The woman had undergone psychological evaluations, and several exorcisms since 2007, but nothing seemed to cure her.

There are countless reasons people divorce, such as infidelity, money woes, communication problems, lack of romance, and the husband is always leaving the toilet seat up. There are also silly reasons, such as social media posts, a husband not liking the movie “Frozen” (seriously), and gambling. Russian man Adrei Karpov famously lost his wife in a poker game. When his wife discovered this, she was so angry she started a relationship with the man her husband lost to, and divorced Karpov, according to the Seattle Times.

Surprisingly, demon possession isn’t the strangest reason for divorce, nor is it unique.

In 2014, a Dubai court allowed a man to divorce his wife because she was possessed by a jinn (an intelligent spirit in Arabian legends) that “controlled her every move,” according to an article in Gulf News. One of those moves was to never have sex with her husband. The man discovered the possession when he discussed the lack of sex with his bride’s parents. They claimed she had been possessed by the entity for years.

A number of “religious scholars” attempted to exercise the jinn, but to no avail. Pleading that he didn’t want to “remain in a sexless marriage with an impish spirit,” the court granted the divorce, per a BBC report. The court also required the man pay his wife $11,000 in alimony, but backtracked when his lawyer claimed since the woman didn’t disclose her possession, she didn’t deserve the alimony, per Al Arabiya television. “The woman and her family cheated my client. They should have been honest and clear about the fact that the wife was possessed by a jinn. He was only told about the jinn after the problem escalated. The woman does not deserve any allowance.”

Although not disclosed in court, in the early 2000s a Folkston, Georgia, man and his wife divorced because she was possessed by a shadow being. According to the files of the paranormal-themed blog “From the Shadows,” gunsmith Eric London was asleep in his house when his wife screamed that someone was in their bedroom. When he woke, he saw the shadow of a man go into the closet. Grabbing his handgun, he turned on the light and went for the closet, but nothing was there.

After that moment, his wife changed. London was convinced she was possessed by a demon that night. “We ended up divorced due to her buying an insurance policy, trying to kill me, telling me she never loved me, etc.,” London said.

A year after the divorce, his wife tried to re-enter his home telling him she was “coming back.” When he refused, the demonic entity “came part way out of her face in a ‘ghost like’ manner. It made one hell of an ugly, face and went back into her, and she gathered up her purse and left.”

With the rising number of exorcisms in the world (a spiritual “emergency” per the UK Telegraph), there are bound to be many more of these cases. The legal system will have to keep up.

Jason Offutt is paranormal investigator, an author of several paranormal books such as “What Lurks Beyond,” “Darkness Walks: Shadow People Among us,” “Haunted Missouri,” and “Paranormal Missouri” and a teacher of journalism at Northwest Missouri State University.